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  Anonymous Coward, May 14th, 2009 @ 12:05pm

  
  

  I've never heard of this band before. When I get home I think I'll check it out. Couldn't hurt really, since it's free. But if they really are as good as some claim, I may decide to purchase the music if it's offered up in DRM free digital format.

   

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  Grahame, May 26th, 2009 @ 9:31am

  
  

  Re:

  If you do, you'll be doing yourself a HUGE favour.

   

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  Geoffrey Kidd (profile), May 14th, 2009 @ 12:16pm

  
  

  Not Too Shabby

  Ran over and listened to the album. Some good stuff there. If it's available without DRM infestation, I think my wife might like it. So... I'll keep an ear out.
  
  I'm reminded of Baen Books' response when the author accidentally released an almost-completed version of his latest novel. They released it as the "Oopsie" Advance Reader's Copy(ARC), available for a small fee. If you later bought the "Official" ARC, you could also get the oopsie as part of the package. If you bought the eBook, you got all three.
  
  Wanna guess who did buy all three? And Baen is and has always been DRM-free.

   

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  Anonymous Coward, May 14th, 2009 @ 12:26pm

  
  

  been a fan of jeff tweedy since his uncle tupelo days... good to know that he is still a classy act

   

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  Matt, May 14th, 2009 @ 12:37pm

  
  

  no surprise

  you can be the RIAA threatened life and limb to every press agency not to cover wilco for using a logical response.
  
  Journalistic capture.

   

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  Anonymous Coward, May 14th, 2009 @ 12:56pm

  
  

  I discovered Wilco when I downloaded their entire discography via bittorrent right after A Ghost is Born. I had never heard of them, but there were enough seeders for the huge file to make me think "maybe they're worth hearing." I've been an enormous fan ever since.
  
  Several years later I own every album they've released on vinyl, gigs and gigs of bootlegs from the tapers that they allow in the audience and have seen them live half a dozen times. They really understand how to treat fans.

   

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  zcat, May 14th, 2009 @ 1:00pm

  
  

  Not the first time though?

  Did a google news search to see how many outlets had picked up the PR. Not many; but in the process of looking I ran into an article "Eight Successful People Grateful That They Got Canned" on WSJ;
  
  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124147696228084981.html
  
  4. Wilco
  
  In 2000 and 2001, the Chicago rock band Wilco recorded an artsy album that departed from the band's previous folk-inflected work. The record, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, didn't sound quite like what the band's label, Reprise Records, was hoping for. Although the album isn't aggressively grating, it wasn't full of the radio-friendly rock that the cash-strapped imprint needed to churn out a few hit singles. Reprise refused to release the album and dropped Wilco from its roster. As part of their severance from the label, the band got to take the master tapes of the record with them.
  
  Without a label to release the album, Wilco decided to simply stream it on their website for free. As critical buzz for the record built, Nonesuch Records (like Reprise, a subsidiary of Warner Brothers) bought Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and gave it a commercial release in 2002. The record was a critical smash; it topped many critics' best-albums list for the year. It was also a commercial success, selling close to 600,000 copies.

   

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  Anonymous Cowherd, May 14th, 2009 @ 1:02pm

  
  

  You can almost hear the panties bunching up

  But how will the artists get paid if everything is free????

   

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  Anonymous Coward, May 14th, 2009 @ 1:46pm

  
  

  Re: You can almost hear the panties bunching up

  >But how will the artists get paid if everything is free????
  
  The point is that everything isn't free. Concerts, CDs, Vinyl and other downloads are paid for those who feel that they want to pay. Lots of people pay lots more don't but it is enough to make a decent profit.

   

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  Person Person, May 15th, 2009 @ 8:36am

  
  

  Re: You can almost hear the panties bunching up

  most of the money that artists make is from touring and merchandise sales. that's not to belittle the fact that they should be making money from cd sales.

   

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  anonymous, Jun 8th, 2009 @ 1:38pm

  
  

  Re: You can almost hear the panties bunching up

  concerts.

   

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  Anonymous Coward, May 14th, 2009 @ 1:03pm

  
  

  streaming album done before

  Gorillaz and a couple others have made their music (and videos) available online via their own websites a few times before this.
  
  The only thing new, is that the stream was a response to a leak, as opposed to the band just being cool.

   

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  BJR, May 14th, 2009 @ 1:17pm

  
  

  Re: streaming album done before

  This is the 4th album in a row that Wilco has streamed online. They've been doing it since 2001.

   

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  cvpunk, May 14th, 2009 @ 1:38pm

  
  

  Re: Re: streaming album done before

  A lot of Indie and Punk bands do this all the time.

   

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  RMR, May 14th, 2009 @ 1:33pm

  
  

  Great response by Wilco

  If only politicians, CEOs and other people in positions of power and authority could deal with setbacks with such honest, unbridled focus as Wilco has.
  
  BTW, the album is @$#*& GREAT!

   

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  jjray, May 14th, 2009 @ 1:57pm

  
  

  contrarian

  As much as I hate to agree with the position of any organization with the word "Fox" in their name, I too would have been mightily pissed had an unfinished version of the movie leaked. Why? Because people start making judgments (and posting those judgments) based upon an unfinished product. In this case, legitimate reviewers started blasting the movie based on the unfinished version. That's very damaging to the makers of Wolverine.
  
  I am in favor of cutting way back on the reach of copyright laws but the Woverine episode just isn't a very good example to make the case.

   

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  Mike (profile), May 14th, 2009 @ 2:07pm

  
  

  Re: contrarian

  In this case, legitimate reviewers started blasting the movie based on the unfinished version. That's very damaging to the makers of Wolverine.
  
  Almost all of the reviews I saw were positive. And if 20th Century Fox had acted reasonably, then more people would recognize that the movie was missing so many special effects, and treated it accordingly.

   

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  uhmno, May 14th, 2009 @ 3:34pm

  
  

  Re: contrarian

  OTOH the movie was successful, and the critics were valid : the movie is mediocre...

   

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  kj, May 14th, 2009 @ 2:29pm

  
  

  Back when they first did this in 2001 it was especially noteworthy. Considering how the free music thing was relatively new, and the album had been rejected by their label. Once that was released it was the highest charting album of their careers. Then they did the same thing of providing streams of their next two albums (before this latest one) and each charted higher than the one before.

   

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  Cecil Green, May 14th, 2009 @ 5:48pm

  
  

  Wilco the Stream

  and Jeff Twitter.

   

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  Anonymous Poster, May 14th, 2009 @ 8:23pm

  
  

  Bravo, Wilco. Good show.

   

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  luckybleu, May 15th, 2009 @ 6:48am

  
  

  this leak hurt wilco

  Anybody who thinks this leak helped wilco is an a-hole,they have lost much needed revenue from this.By streaming their alblum now on their own site they are hoping to attract fans to participate in merchandizing and selling concert tickets, its the only option they have left to get paid for their work.People keep downloading on illegal sites and telling yourself the artists are better off for it,so you don't have any guilt,the truth is artists are better off when they are compensated for their works

   

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  Theologian, May 22nd, 2009 @ 6:36am

  
  

  Re: this leak hurt wilco

  Understand your sentiment but it's just not true. This band has streamed every album, allow taping at thier concerts and are doing better than ever. Their last album, after streaming, opened up #1 on the Billboard charts. The latest DVD was number one opening week. Their are many bands who use pirating as a form of free publicity. The Grateful Dead have lived off this for over 40 years now. They allowed bootlegging when every other outlet shunned it because of the harm it did the artist. They made out quite all right. If a band has to try to survive today only selling CD's they might as well pack it in. Plus it really invigorates the fan base. This record will open number one on the charts and how much higher would that have been if it wasn't leaked?

   

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  Anonymous, May 28th, 2009 @ 12:37pm

  
  

  Re: this leak hurt wilco

  Not everything is about making money. Wilco make records because they like playing money. They make much more money on the road then they do selling their records...

   

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  Adrian, Jan 3rd, 2010 @ 9:55pm

  
  

  Money

  Yeah considering a cd is usually 20 bucks these days while a concert is $100 plus I think most bands make most money from these. Plus you only need to buy one CD but can go to lots of concerts.

   

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